Friendly Conversation
by Kizmet
Summary: Several months after Sanctuary Buffy and Cordelia run into each other.


**Friendly Conversation**

Disclaimer: Characters and Premise are borrowed from the show "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer."

"Cordelia… Wow, what a surprise." 

Cordelia froze; slowly she turned to face the petite, blond girl. "I live here," she replied coolly. 

"Yeah, well LA is a big city, I was visiting my dad, I didn't expect to run into anyone I knew." 

"Try not to run into anyone else while you're here," Cordelia replied. 

"How is he?" 

"Wesley? He's great, A-one. With a little encouragement he turned out to be a real asset to our team. Not that you'd have ever learned that. Someone isn't perfect enough for you, you ripe them to shreds then send them packing," Cordelia answered, purposely misunderstanding Buffy's question. 

"Why would I care about Wesley?" Buffy snapped. "How is Angel doing?" 

"Why would I think you care about Angel, given how you act?" Cordelia asked angrily. "Every time you even think about him our lives go through the shredder. 

"You send him a gift and within twenty-four hours he's being tortured. You show up at Thanksgiving… well lets just say it was a whole lot worse than you know. 

"Then we come to your latest visit and his return visit to Sunnydale. 

"You know since we started working together, Angel and I became friends, real friends, the type I've never had before. He, Wesley and Doyle are the best friends I've ever had, the only ones I could completely trust. 

"While Angel's been here in LA, away from you, he's changed, he smiles, makes the occasional joke, even laughs once in a great while. Before your last visit anyway. Angel doesn't smile anymore, he doesn't laugh. Hell unless it's case related he doesn't talk anymore. 

"It's been, what, three months since your last visit, and he still hasn't recovered. So why don't you go home before you do even more damage." 

"I didn't do anything wrong!" Buffy protested. "It was Faith and Spike's fault, they were the one's that started the problems." 

Cordelia laughed bitterly. "You two were in public hallway during your fight at the police station, Wesley heard the whole thing," she said. "You couldn't have found a more cruel or vindictive time or way to tell Angel about your new boy-toy. Don't tell me how innocent you are, I'm not buying." 

"I might not have agreed with Angel about Faith, and okay, I didn't support his decision about her. But at least I didn't go out of my way to stab him in the back, figuratively speaking, of course, Angel would have gotten over a literal knife a lot faster." 

"Look, I just told Angel the truth, I wasn't trying to hurt him." 

"Oh yeah, you've got a new type of relationship, one with trust, one where you really know the guy. Well the truth was you didn't want to know Angel, you preferred that he kept the unpleasant part of his life hidden. You knew he had a past, but you didn't want to hear or think about it. That's why you didn't understand why he had to try to save Faith. I didn't understand it either, neither did Wesley. But unlike you, we asked, and Angel told us. Have you ever considered just sitting down and asking anyone why they do what they do? Angel's story wasn't pretty, but we listened, and afterwards we understood him better. You'd rather bury your head in the sand. If you can't ignore a problem, or solve it by killing something, you can't handle it. 

As for you not trusting Angel, that was a flat out lie, told for the sole purpose of hurting him. If you didn't trust Angel, you'd never have let him feed from you. You trusted him with your life, and you were right to. Angel would die for you, even now. No matter what you do to him, how you hurt him, he'll still love you. You sent him to Hell and it didn't change anything, you turned his life into a hell on Earth and he still loves you. He's already more than died to protect you. 

"He was human, Buffy. Angel was a living human being again, but he learned you would have a shorter life if he stayed that way, so he gave it up. 

"Angel gave up humanity… for you, I can't imagine why he thought you were worth that." 

Buffy stared at Cordelia, shocked to the core. 

"Do us favor," Cordelia said as she walked away. "Stay out of our lives." 

The End 

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